How to create a context that leaves readers begging for more

Saturday, August 3, 1793. The sun came up, as it had every day since the end of May, bright, hot, and unrelenting.... Dead fish and gooey vegetable matter were exposed and rotted, while swarms of insects droned in the heavy, humid air.” So begins Jim Murphy’s Newbery Honor–winning An American Plague (Clarion, 2003). Last month, I talked about creating context—how to get the necessary background information into a book for young readers with short attention spans and little knowledge of a topic. As you may recall, in Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Holiday House, 2006), Russell Freedman uses brevity, clarity, and well-chosen photographs—a professional self-restraint—to make sure his readers can easily enter the story. Jim does almost the opposite.

Rather than gently inviting readers into the story, Jim paints a picture and creates a mood that reminds me of a ghost story told late at night around a campfire. Just one glance at An American Plague’s subtitle—The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793—tells us that we’re heading into unfamiliar territory. But look again at the opening paragraph: there’s a specific date, the hot, oppressive sun, dead fish, heavy, humid air. In other words, we’re being skillfully guided from one familiar detail to the next; until by the end of the paragraph, the weather has turned into one of the characters (the “heavy, humid air” feels foul and dangerous). As far as the story goes, we may not know what to expect, but we’re secure in its descriptions: “I get it,” we may be saying to ourselves. “I can picture this world—it’s weird and cool. I wonder what’s going to happen?”

For the next three pages, we’re led through Philadelphia’s neighborhoods, with their strange smells, which become another character (like the London fog in those stories about Jack the Ripper). The narrative’s tight focus accomplishes a few things: it presents us with a walking map of the city and information about the people’s occupations (which will become important, later on); it also connects us to the concrete and immediate.

Only on page four does Jim finally draw back to introduce us to the big picture—America, the Revolution, and France. And by that time, we’re comfortable with the story (“Hey, I can follow this”) and hooked on it (“Why is everything so spooky?”).

Every nonfiction writer knows about using an opening incident—a you-are-there moment—to capture the reader’s interest. But all too often, after that scene has been set, authors switch into textbook mode: they’ve given us the spoonful of sugar, now it’s time for the medicine. Jim’s introductory chapter shows that writing compelling nonfiction is a lot more challenging than simply tacking a cool event onto the beginning of a chapter. Jim has shaped the chapter (in fact, the entire book) around the city’s ominous mood—around mystery and disquiet. He’s withheld information and made us feel as puzzled, excluded, and on edge as the people of that terrifying time and place. And when he presents more information, it only adds to the unsettling mood.

Here’s how the last paragraph in his opening chapter begins: “No one noticed that the church bells were tolling more often than usual to announce one death, and then another.” As the bells toll, ringing us out of the chapter, our eyes are still fixed on the strange doings in the streets of Philadelphia. When Jim presents the larger context, it comes as a welcome relief. We want more background information—it satisfies our hunger to know more, to make sense of this troubling and distressing world.

In Russell’s story, context arrives painlessly. But Jim holds back and doles it out bit by bit, so we’re eager for more. These are two good approaches, but as you’ll see next month, they’re not the only ones.